Inmate's Travel Under Fire

Trips With Mom To Doctor Questioned

February 06, 1995|By PATTI ROSENBERG Daily Press

WILLIAMSBURG — A man convicted of sexually molesting a 5-year-old girl has been allowed to leave the Williamsburg-James City County Jail once a month with his mother - and without any jail escort - an action that some area corrections officials believe is irresponsible at best, and possibly illegal.

Once a month, Thomas Franklin McKown, 33, leaves guards behind and goes to Richmond with his mother to see a doctor. Afterward, they have lunch at a restaurant before McKown goes back to jail.

McKown, of James City County, was convicted of aggravated sexual battery in October and is serving four years for fondling the child last summer.

McKown has about a dozen prior convictions for such crimes as possession of marijuana, being drunk in public, making obscene phone calls, using abusive language, disorderly conduct and carrying a concealed weapon, court records show.

"He's not getting the proper punishment," complained the mother of the girl McKown fondled. She spoke on the record, but the Daily Press is withholding her name to protect the identity of the child.

"It's a damn shame that when the commonwealth's attorney and the judge do their jobs, the jail can't follow through,'' she said. ``It's a total injustice."

But Williamsburg Sheriff W.B. Dorsey, who runs the jail, defended the situation.

"If he's going to the doctor, what difference does it make who takes him?" Dorsey asked. He also said he wasn't concerned if McKown had a meal while he was out: "If lunch time comes, he's got to eat."

There's nothing noteworthy about McKown's trips, Dorsey said. "Family members have been taking people to doctors as long as I've been here," he said. Dorsey has been the Williamsburg sheriff since 1970.

But administrators at other Peninsula jails said they wouldn't permit the kind of arrangement McKown has.

Inmates at the York County Jail frequently need to see doctors outside, but a sheriff's deputy takes them, said Lt. Sherry Castellaw.

Newport News Sheriff Clay Hester said he would never allow family members to take prisoners to doctors. There would be an obvious danger of the inmate not coming back, Hester said. Also, "If an inmate committed a crime along the way, we would be responsible."

Hester said he doesn't like to second-guess colleagues, but he questioned whether what Dorsey was doing was legal. There's nothing in state law that specifically prohibits it, but there's no authorization for it, either, he said.

"The law is: We run the jail and we hold the inmates," Hester said. If he lets an inmate leave in the custody of a relative, then "I've, in fact, released him," he said. "The law doesn't say I can do that."

Virginia Department of Corrections regulations do not permit inmates to leave prison without being accompanied by at least one correctional officer. But those regulations apply only to state prisons, not local jails, said Amy Miller, assistant to the director of the Department of Corrections.

Sheriffs, who are elected officials, have more autonomy in setting their own standards for the way they run their jails, Miller said. Still, sheriffs are "legally responsible for custody and security," and it wouldn't make "good security sense" for them to let jail inmates leave without official escorts, she said.

The Virginia Board of Corrections issues a document on "minimum standards" that jails must meet. It addresses how transportation and security should be handled for inmates involved in work release, education and other treatment and rehabilitative programs ordered by the court and monitored by the sheriff's department, said Certification Supervisor Lou Ann White.

The medical treatment McKown gets in Richmond wasn't ordered by the court. Nor is it monitored by the sheriff. Dorsey said he doesn't know what kind of doctor McKown sees or why.

Dorsey wouldn't discuss what criteria he uses to determine who gets the privilege of leaving jail without a sheriff's deputy. "I don't want to be rude, but that's an administrative matter," he said.

He stressed several times that he won't be dictated to about how to run the jail. And he said that the child's mother should mind her own business.

"If that mother had been tending to her own affairs, like she's tending to mine now, maybe this whole offense wouldn't have happened," he said.

The child lives in Harrisonburg with her mother, but was visiting her father in the Williamsburg area when McKown assaulted her last summer in her father's home.

Circuit Judge William Person imposed a 10-year sentence with six years suspended and ordered McKown to be held at the jail until he could be transferred to the penitentiary.

Robert McCloskey, manager of inmate intake and information for the state correctional system, said that the transfer will probably take place within the next several weeks.

But Dorsey said he has some input, and he might keep McKown at the jail longer. "I may even put him on work release," he said. "I may even try to find him a job."